Point of View

The novel is written mostly in the third person with an omniscient narrator, with occasional discrepancies. An example of one such discrepancy is the depiction of the aftermath of Jean’s suicide, in which the narrative voice appears to be Chris herself reflecting on how she felt at the time, from some undefined moment in the future: “So long as that and so near as that, you’d thought of the hours and days as a dark, cold pit you’d never escape” (74). This fracture in the narrative voice reflects the fracture in Chris’s psyche which occurs as a result of her mother’s death.

The main body of novel is told from the perspective of Chris Guthrie (later Chris Tavendale), apart from a few key exceptions including the Prologue and Epilude which are written from the perspective of an outside observer of Kinraddie...